1. Field
One embodiment of the invention relates to a conference system which is actualized as one application of a telephone system to be formed by using, for example, an Internet Protocol (IP) technique and its multimedia data storage method.
2. Description of the Related Art
A system which actualizes a voice communication via a best-effort type communication network such as the Internet is well known. The system of this kind is referred to as an IP telephone system or Voice over IP (VoIP), and is applied not only to a wide-area telephone network but also to a local communication network such as a private telephone network. Hereinafter, a telephone terminal in the system of this kind is referred to as an IP telephone including a fixed telephone and a software-implemented telephone (softphone). In recent years, a conference system also called a visual communication system (VCS) by using the system of this kind has become widely used (for example, refer to Jpn. Pat. Appln. KOKAI Publication No. 2000-115738).
By the way, in the existing technique, the conference system records video data and voice data of a video conference to a dedicated server by a terminal operation performed by a user who is actually participating in a conference. A user who wants to refer these items of the data obtains the data in a manner to receive steam distribution of the data or to download the data from the server.
The existing technique has to be provided with a server to store the data showing progress of the conference. If it is assumed that such a function is provided for the existing server, it is not preferable for the existing server because its original server function might be impaired by the provided function because the server consumes a large amount of resources. A user who wants to browse or listen multimedia data (including video and voice) has to access the server; it takes a long time for the access and sometimes, depending on the line conditions, irritates the user.